


Love is More Than Romance

by shnuffeluv



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: ACCEPTING ANXIETY Part 2/2: Can Anxiety Be Good?, Episode: Dealing with INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS, Episode: Selfishness v. Selflessness, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, One-Sided Deceit Sanders & Thomas Sanders (Video Blogging RPF), One-Sided Relationship, Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22104652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shnuffeluv/pseuds/shnuffeluv
Summary: Deceit had been struggling with chest pain for a while, but pushed it aside for the sake of the others.And then he started coughing up petals.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 144





	Love is More Than Romance

It started out small. Thomas was an adult, supposedly knowing everything he needed in order to set out in the world on his own. Deceit could feel small pain every once in a while in his chest, but he didn’t attribute it to much. Remus and Virgil got similar, so Deceit assumed that all the sides had it for whatever reason. It was possible that Thomas was sick, but Deceit always convinced Virgil that wasn’t the case when he would freak out.

As time went on, though, the pain grew worse and more frequent. It bothered Deceit, but he did his best to ignore it. After all, Remus and Virgil didn’t appear to have as much increasing pain, and the Lights didn’t show the pain at all. He just had to be quiet and deal with it.

And then the changes started to happen. Remus seemed to be growing more grotesque, more unkempt, and Virgil’s eye bags were dark enough that he started wearing eye shadow to cover it up. Deceit looked in the mirror one day and started when he realized that he was growing scales. He tried to pick them off, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t get rid of them, and it hurt to try and remove them like it would any other part of his flesh.

It was clear that Thomas was rejecting Deceit, Virgil, and Remus. It wasn’t like Deceit cared. He operated better in the shadows anyway, convincing everyone that he wasn’t there and that lying was the right thing to do, the _moral_ thing to do, quietly. Patton sometimes saw through him but didn’t catch him enough. Deceit still had a hold on Thomas. He was proud of that. He was proud that he could protect his center.

And then came the petals.

It happened early in the morning. Deceit had been getting almost nonstop pain from his chest, and had been coughing relentlessly the past couple days. He had woken up from his coughing and wasn’t surprised when the cough produced something in his mouth. What he spat into the trashcan wasn’t mucus, or bile, however.

It was a single flower petal.

Horror raced down Deceit’s spine faster than a lightning bolt. He cared for Thomas deeply, yes, and he wanted to make sure that Thomas stayed safe, but he didn’t love Thomas.

…Not romantically, at any rate. The care he employed to Thomas must have been interpreted by the universe as love. And as had been made clear by the growing snake features on Deceit’s left half, Thomas clearly rejected him. Wanted nothing to do with him.

Wanted him dead.

Deceit tried to hide it, but the others noticed that morning that he was pale and shaky, and his cough was still present. He waved it off as some sort of bug, something that must have hit him harder than the rest of Thomas’ mind for whatever reason. The others bought it just enough to not question him further. He was doing okay. No one had to know that he was coughing up petals, infrequent now but he knew it would only get worse.

When Virgil came to him quietly one night, when Remus had retreated to his room for the night, and confessed that he had been beginning to cough up petals, Deceit did his best to reassure Virgil. They wouldn’t die; Thomas needed them too much and he would see that eventually. Virgil left the conversation reassured, while Deceit left it more terrified than ever before. If Thomas was rejecting them to this extreme, it could mean nothing good. Thomas, like it or not, intentional or not, was killing them all slowly.

As the years went on, Thomas started the Sanders Sides videos, and Virgil got a foot in the door to the Lights, showing up fairly frequently in the videos. Deceit at this point was coughing up at least one petal every time he coughed, but it was more likely two, and the especially painful coughs produced three petals, half of a flower, in yellow, purple, and green colors. Of _course_ he had to be coughing up flowers that represented a rainbow, but especially the side of the rainbow Thomas was rejecting.

Virgil ducked out. Deceit and Remus couldn’t gain access to his room, and Thomas was behaving strangely, and Roman and Logan didn’t understand the significance of Virgil not being there. Patton, bless him, managed to get Thomas into Virgil’s room, and they managed to bring Virgil back from the brink. But Virgil moved his room to the Lights. And when Deceit spent a day following Virgil, just to make sure he was okay, he didn’t cough up any petals. Not a single one.

Virgil had been accepted into the group by Thomas.

And that only made Deceit’s cough worse. He spat up half flowers constantly, now, yellow, green, purple, and orange. Remus couldn’t hide that he had Hanahaki, too, but he didn’t seem to _want_ to hide it. He took _pride_ in the fact that he could cough up bloody flower petals. Deceit couldn’t understand it. But, then again, Deceit never understood Remus.

Something had to be done, however. Deceit had to convince Thomas he was useful. He was dying, suffocating on the flowers in his lungs and he looked sickly more often than not these days. He disguised himself as Patton, tried to get Thomas to lie, but he was found out by the others, and as Thomas tried to argue that he was a good person, Deceit could barely keep the cough and the flowers back. The second he sank out, he was coughing into his trashcan, overflowing with petals he had only coughed up that day. And when he nearly coughed so hard he puked, he produced his first full flower. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and purple. He couldn’t help it; he cried. If he was this far gone, he was as good as dead if Thomas didn’t learn to accept him.

Remus tried to help comfort him, but it was no use. He was getting sicker and sicker, the flowers coming up more and more often, until Deceit was constantly coughing and spitting out the bloody flowers that Remus would inevitably collect. He claimed it was to display for a project in his room, but they both knew he picked them up because Deceit couldn’t stand to see them, but couldn’t bring himself to clean them up every time he coughed more, either.

At the end of the court case over the wedding, Deceit couldn’t take it anymore. His left half completely covered in scales, his lungs screaming at him from trying to suppress his cough the whole time, and the others still didn’t understand his message; he snapped.

“Don’t you understand what you’re doing?!” Deceit bellowed at the top of his lungs. “You’re killing yourself, Thomas! You’re setting yourself up for failure, and trying to deny parts of you that only want to _help,_ to keep you _safe!”_

“Oh, right, because you’re safe,” Virgil scoffed.

Deceit glowered at him, and took in as deep a breath as he could when he was choking from the inside out. He coughed, harder than he had ever coughed before, tears springing to his eyes with the force of it, as half a dozen or so flowers fell from his mouth. Everyone was staring at him with wide eyes. “You’re killing yourself,” Deceit seethed. “All I ever want to do is to help, and all you see is a _monster!”_

Thomas wouldn’t look Deceit in the eyes.

“Look at me, damn it!” Deceit demanded. “Look at what you’ve done to me! I didn’t used to look like this, you know. I was as normal as Logan, or Roman, or Patton! But you pushed me away, and the more you rejected me, and saw me as a monster, the more of a monster I became! You’re killing yourself–” he cut himself off as his voice caught and he coughed up more flowers, the blood staining the petals so much so that they almost looked brown. “–You’re killing yourself, and you don’t even care! You’re _happy_ that I’m dying!”

“I’m not–” Thomas protested.

“I see the relief in Patton’s eyes,” Deceit seethed. “I can see the way Virgil relaxed as he saw just how much blood was on them, just how much damage has been done to me. How I don’t have the ability to last much longer. Even if you aren’t admitting it to yourself, you’re relieved. I can _feel_ the lie that you’re concerned, and I’m through pretending to act like everything is fine.”

The room was dead silent, save for Deceit’s erratic, labored breathing. Thomas was staring at him in horror and shock. Deceit coughed once more, another flower falling from his mouth. “You can keep those,” he spat. “A reminder of what happens when you’re a ‘good person.’”

Deceit sank out, letting Logan rise up and no doubt rationalize why it was okay for Deceit to die. He stumbled into his room, his head swimming and spots dancing across his vision. Yelling had taken it out of him, maybe he should lie down and rest…

Remus burst into the room, coughing up half-flowers and Deceit couldn’t even bring himself to lift his head up from where he had laid down on his pillow. “What did they _do_ to you?!” Remus exclaimed, rushing over.

Deceit could barely breathe. “They want…they still want to be honest. They want to miss the callback…” he wheezed. “They know I’m dying, and they don’t care.”

Remus’ eyes were filled with unshed tears and unbridled fury. “I’ll make them pay for this,” Remus vowed. “I don’t know how, but I will.”

“Well,” Deceit panted, laughing. “Thomas wants to be honest with himself. He’ll have to face you, and realize that you’re a part of him as well.”

Remus blinked and a few tears fell. “Not without you,” Remus said. “I don’t want to do it without you.”

Deceit weakly smiled. “I’ll be right here,” he lied. “You can tell me all about it when you get back. I’ll rest and you can tell me what you did when I wake up.”

“Promise?” Remus asked in a small voice.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Deceit croaked.

“Okay…” Remus said. “I’ll make you proud.”

“I know you will,” Deceit said.

Remus left and Deceit closed his eyes. Not that it made much of a difference with his vision as dark as it was. He took a breath, or tried to. The flowers were growing all the way in his throat by this point, and he couldn’t bring enough air in to keep himself conscious.

And when Remus came back to the room, all he saw was Deceit’s prone form, flowers blooming inside his mouth as he laid there, completely still. Remus felt for a pulse, and found none. Tears fell as he coughed. “I’ll make them pay,” he promised Deceit. “I’ll make them pay and they’ll _beg_ you to come back.”

Remus left the room, walking to an orange door that he hadn’t dared touch in years. He knocked on it roughly and the side on the other end yanked open the door with an irritated, “What do you want?!”

“Deceit is gone, and the others will pay,” Remus growled. “Are you up for destroying them?”

The side laughed. “Always, darling boy.”

**Author's Note:**

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